The Sinister Four: Chapter 7
Josh's P.O.V We ran towards the top of the mountain in lines. Artemis is leading the demigods to the left flank, and Apollo is leading the demigods to the right flank of the mountain. Monsters saw us, and the monsters began to attack us. It was a fierce battle between the two sides, especially when Gaea had the demons defending this area as well. Just like the last time, the demons didn't think, they just charge at the demigods. The demigods, including myself, anticipated this type of attack and sidestepped and sliced at the demons chest, and the demon disintegrated. More monsters ranging from Empousa's, Laistrygonian Giants, Telkhines and Scythian Dracaenaes begin to attack. They are more aggresive than the last time, but we demigods have trained and practiced to be more aggresive than the monsters. Just then, the 9 feet tall giant came into view. Its build is much much more bulkier than I had seen when I was in my dream. The guy was ripped to its fingers. This guy can take down us demigods with relative ease. Apollo and Artemis ordered us demigods to fall back and face the monsters that are behind us, as they engaged the 9 feet tall giant. We then came across Kampe, the woman that imprisoned Briares and other Hecatoncheires, and the early Cyclopes. She had the head and waist of a snake, and scale legs and arms. Kampe held two poison daggers that melts as if a strong acid or oxidant had come into contact with it. "Guys!" Percy said. "Avoid the dagger. It's very poison can..." Just before Percy can finish what he was about to say, Kampe sliced overhead and we were forced to duck. Apparently there's one small variable that we had not taken into account, and this proves very deadly indeed. The small sword was able to emit corrosive pinkish liquid that spreads all over us. Thankfully, Melody put up her magical shield that shields us from the effect of the liquid. The pink liquid fell to the ground, and it made a nice steam upon contact to the ground. Melody removed the magical shield, and within seconds, the air appears to be contaminated with sulfur. I took a few steps back to get some fresh air, and once I am in the fresh air, I took a deep breath, held it, and charged at Kampe. I barely missed getting mutilated on my right arm, and I stabbed Kampe on her right leg. Kampe hissed in pain, and I rolled out of the way. Kampe swung her sword at me again, and that gave Percy a window of opportunity to kill her. Percy jumped towards Kampe, and plunged his sword in her back. Kampe hissed, and she disintegrated, leaving two corrosive knives. Just then, I saw the gods. The gods have been badly beaten. Apollo's blazing arrows have no effect on him, Artemis' arrows also have no effect on him, despite the fact that she had been scoring a direct hit on his eyes and his forehead. They are bleeding golden ichor, the blood of the gods. Apollo tried to scoot away from the 9 foot tall ultra-strong giant, but it was futile. Then, I glanced back at the corrosive daggers that Kampe had left. Corrosive..... I had an idea. This must have been the stupidest idea ever, because the hilt of the dagger is covered with pink corrosive sulfur, so I summoned a weak plasma golden sword, and carefully tosses it at Artemis because she's the closest one to me. The acid corrodes away my plasma sword, and I abruptly make the plasma golden sword disappear. Artemis was scooting on her legs to get to the corrosive dagger, and as soon as the big guy sees this, he instinctively ran towards Artemis, and as soon as Artemis gets the dagger, she plunges it at the guy. Artemis scoots away and gets on her foot as the guy was suffering really bad from Kampe's poison. I watched as the guy's chest was rotting to blackish color and he was screaming in agonizing pain. Slowly, his body corrodes and after a while, there was nothing but ashes. A cheer went up on the demigods, but that was shortlived because just then, giants started to rise from the ground. Some of them I recognized as Porphyrion, Polybotes, Alcyoneus, and their minions. "Well well...." Porphyrion looked at us, and he smirked. "It appears the tradition has changed. The gods are fighting on your side now." "That's because we're aware of the prophecies..." I said, and simultaneously I and Apollo struck Porphyrion with our arrows. Apollo's arrow hit Porphyrion's chest, but mine didn't because he had time to duck. Porphyrion and his brothers laughed. "Thanks for the heads up. I was already forgetting about the prophecy anyways about how a god and a demigod are required to kill us." Porphyrion stomped his foot, and Earthborns started coming out of the ground to surround us in a circle. We do only what we can do, Fight. I quickly unsheathed my sword and stabbed the first earthborn in its chest. But it turns out that the Earthborn that I just killed turned solid once I killed it, so I was having a hard time pulling my sword out. I let go of my sword and summoned plasma sword instead and started killing the Earthborns. The others are doing the same. Percy jumped up to the earthborns shoulder and stabbed the earthborn in the neck, and the earthborn melted to the ground. Polybotes was the next. He entered the battlefield full of demigods and he swept his javelin and it sent Percy, Annabeth, and Adam away. Polybotes was making poison out of water, and then he flinged it at the group of demigods, but the demigods were lucky because the poison splashed just a few centimeters away from Percy. Just then, an silver arrow whizzed past us and it hit Polybotes right in his temple. Percy quickly jumped on him and stabbed his chest, and then Polybotes disintegrated. That only left with Porphyrion and Alcyoneus. Fortunately, his homeland now is in Greece, so that we can kill him here. I grabbed my sword, that clattered on the floor from the Earthborn, and we demigods approached Alcyoneus. "Well, Daughter of Ares? Are you gonna do something?" Alcyoneus asked. Daughter of Ares.... I am not Daughter of Ares. I'm not even a girl. I glanced back, and then I saw Clarisse with her electric spear, now has been upgraded to a lightning spear. She angrily charged at Alcyoneus, and Alcyoneus allowed her to approach. I wonder why, because I'm sure that Alcyoneus would have anticipated the attack by now. Then I glanced behind Alcyoneus. Behind him was Enceladus holding the sky. If Clarisse charged at him, Alcyoneus would just allow Clarisse to ram straight to Enceladus, knocking him off the sky and Clarisse will be trapped. "Clarisse, wait!" I yelled. Just then, I was faced with my own problem. I was so busy looking at Clarisse that I did not realize that Porphyrion was just a few feet from me. I barely dodged his spear, and Porphyrion breathed fire, which I barely dodged. I looked at Clarisse. Apparently, Clarisse stopped just in time for her to gain enough traction to stop herself from knocking Enceladus off the sky. Clarisse then stabbed her lightning spear at Alcyoneus' right foot, and he screamed in pain. Then Clarisse jumped on his chest and stabbed him in the chest, and Alcyoneus disintegrated. Porphyrion, looking at his disintegrating brother, grew angry with rage. His attacks are faster and stronger. I jumped, parried, shuffled back and forth in order to not get hit by Porphyrion's spear. Porphyrion finally made a grab for me, and he got my legs. I flailed around and stabbed Porphyrion in his hand. Porphyrion abruptly let go of me and stomped his right foot once more. I noticed that most of the demigods have fled Mount Othrys with a silver car, and the only ones still here in the fight are me, Clarisse, Mary, Adam and Apollo. The rest had went with Artemis' silver car on the way to Camp Half-Blood. I had no idea what made them retreat, but surely we're winning. There's no reason for us demigods to retreat, especially when we're in the point of no return. Then, I saw why the demigods are retreating. Apparently, the earth where they were fighting began to change like a quicksand. As soon as I was charging at Porphyrion for the final strike, me, Clarisse, Mary, Adam and Apollo were sucked down the earth, and everything went black. I woke up with a daze, and realized that we're in an earthen prison. The ceiling was about 6.5 meters tall, the room was about 15 meters long and 12 meters wide, and sitting beside me was Mary. There's a chandelier hanging on the ceiling, and strangely, it's only one. I don't know what happened to the rest, but I'm sure that they're here, and my first priority now is to wake Mary up. I ran up to her and shook her awake. "Mary!" I whispered in her face, shaking her head gently as I get on her stomach. "Wake up!" Mary started to move, and that gave me hope. She slowly opened her eyes as she came to full consciousness. Then, Mary realized that we're in an earthen prison, and she started to pound the walls. "Mary!" I shouted, tugging on her pants as I was not able to reach her shirt since it's way to tall. "Stop! You're just going to make the ceiling crumble on us!" Yes.... that's right. A voice in my head said, and I'm sure that Mary heard it too because Mary was listening to it too. '' Don't bother to break down the walls. You're just gonna kill yourselves, and besides, the clock's ticking''. "What do you mean?" I asked her. Your very breath is your clock now. This very room has no outside contact, meaning that this room is airtight. A good way to kill off demigods like you, eh? Now I realized about that. Our very breath is the clock that Gaea was mentioning. Apparently, Mary had heard the same thing, so we got up to look for weak spots. I examined the ceiling and went to one corner of the room and fired a laser. Immediately, earthen rocks and dirt began to spill onto this room with medium velocity. Once, I had observed the Oxford University science lab, and they are doing this experiment where a can full of liquid was poured and then the water poured fast. When it's already about a quarter of it, the water poured slower. From that experience, I could tell that we are trapped quite far from the surface, about 8 feet at most. I immediately sighed at relief, and I told Mary, who was still quite frightened, that we're gonna get out of here. "But how?" Mary asked. "We're stuck down here, and we don't know how deep this chamber is!" I kinda forgot how pessimistic Mary can be when she was trapped in some dire situations, such as this. Her state of mind went immediately down and depressed, instead of searching a way out. I could feel that the oxygen concentration here is getting lower, so I took a deep breath and held it. I went beside Mary, and shook Mary, trying to get her to cooperate with me. "Josh, what's the point?" Mary asked. I pointed up, as if trying a sign language to make her understand as I held my breath. I can't seem to talk sense to Mary, as she breathed slightly faster since the oxygen here is getting infinitesimally thinner and thinner. Mary realized what I was doing, and I went beside her and lied down on top of her chest. I was still holding by breath here, and I kept staring at the ceiling. Mary kept looking at me and she held me with both of her hands, like a blanket. I immediately let go of my breath that I had held and I was gasping and panting. I got to admit I was stupid for not figuring out what to do and just conserve the air around us, even though there's a slightest chance that we're going to get out. There has to be some sort of a way out. I just need to figure out, and somehow, I knew that my friends are being held adjacent to this wall, Clarisse and Adam. From the way Mary pounded the walls, I could tell that they don't have a large room like this one, so they probably would have suffocated first. But the funny thing is that we're the ones suffocating first. One of the reasons is because I am here with Mary, who requires a lot of oxygen, about 4-5 times the normal average demigods, and pounding the walls makes her consume more energy. "Hello!!!" I shouted over to the other side. I heard some kind of shouting back, and I could vaguely tell whose voice it is. It sounded like Clarisse, but at the same time it's not. Apparently it's because of the blur effect of this wall that is causing a disturbance in the sound waves that is travelling at. "Don't worry! We're getting you out of there!" I listened very carefully. Thankfully I have quite sharp hearings when I truly focus, so I activated that mind set and focused. I listened. I heard gasping, as if they're suffocating, both Clarisse and Adam. This could only lead to one conclusion. Clarisse and Adam were suffocating to their deaths in their rooms! But I've heard similar things about Nico being held in a bronze jar. I heard that a few years ago, when he was searching for the doors of death, he was captured and brought to Rome in a bronze jar. There, he put himself in a death trance, a kind of trance that could only be conducted by a child of Hades/Pluto. It was a last resort kind of thing so that if he put himself in that state, that means his life is in mortal danger, with very very small food supplies to survive with and barely enough air. But we don't have that kind of skill. It's only a child of Hades/Pluto could do. Even when I was captured, I just simply conserve my strength and supplies, and I never put myself in a death trance (that's because my captive brought me food about once in every 3 days. Anyways, I gestured to Mary so that we brought down this wall together. "On the count of three." I told her. "Why wait?" Mary asked as she smiled at me. Then, I quickly made a plasma fist and both of us smashed the wall that separates us between our wall and Clarisse's and Adam's. Clarisse and Adam, who were previously had been gasping for breath due to the lack of oxygen in the air, gasped once and panted heavily shortly. I saw Adam kept gasping for breath as if he is in a panic attack. I immediately rushed towards him and held his hand. "Adam!" I knelt beside him and shook his head lightly. He was apparently still in shock of Claustrophobic. I guess that's normal for children of Poseidon, since the seas are very open that stretches for miles and miles. This tight space was just the identical opposite of the wideness of the ocean. Anyways, after I had blown a hole through that wall, I felt my barriers dropping down to 1/5. It was exasperating to find out that you're going to go in a coma any moment now. A roar of laughter erupted around the walls. You see, Joshy? Gaea spoke in my head, You don't stand a chance in this war. Even your friends are going to have a busy time hauling your useless body out of the combat zone. I can't believe what she is saying.... is she trying to tell me that I am going to fell in a coma right in the middle of the battle? If that's happening...... No... I tried not to think about it. Gaea has this aura that makes us demigods feel nervous and her power of pessimism towards the demigods is just immense. Gaea could have just turn everyone into her cause, for her own destructive cause. I blinked and found Adam had already went back to normal, and that's a relief. Adam was already crawling to this room and suddenly he didn't feel so claustrophobic anymore. He stood up and examined the falling stones and grains of rocks from the edge ceiling. "Guys!" Adam called. "I got some good news!" Category:Josh-Son Of Hyperion Category:The Sinister Four Category:Fan Fiction